Reading

Really, this page should just be called 'links' because that's what it is. Lists of links are close to useless, though, and I'm trying to be a bit more discriminating. You just need to promise to come back here after reading whatever I recommend below; I am not a fan of pop-up windows, preferring to leave that choice to you, the reader.

I am always in the process of updating this list.

Viva TV

Not reading, exactly. In fact, if we're being precise, it's TV, which a lot of people consider to be almost the diametric opposite of reading. In any case, it's Germany's answer to MTV. It's much better than MTV, at least if you like Europop music and don't mind the occasional Dionne Warwick oldie. It's a European company, so you get those odd, format-defying European playlists. At least there's no oompah music.

Anyway, the amazing thing, and the point I'm trying to make, is that VIVA has a live stream of their programming going, 24 hours a day. It's available in 56kbps and 300kbps versions, for both Realplayer and Windows Media Player. Videos, interviews, VJ chatter, and ads (much less of these last two than MTV), all of them pumped into your house courtesy of the Internet.

I predict that you'll never see MTV doing anything like this; they're too timid, and U.S. licensing agreements for their content are too restrictive, to do something like this in this country.

Mother Earth Mother Board

Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, etc.) follows the route of FLAG (Fiber Link Around the Globe) and goes on at some length about global communications. Longest article ever published in Wired. The original print version had some fantastic photos and maps that are, sadly, missing from the on-line version. Definitely worth reading simply for the text, though.

Cable & Wireless History

Can almost be seen as a companion to Mother Earth Mother Board (above). Traces the history of Cable & Wireless, and covers technological development of global telecom fairly well. Genuinely worth reading -- not just a corporate vanity site.

John Patrick

John Patrick is a honcho at IBM (VP of Internet Technology), and this is his web site. He seems like a pretty interesting person, and his site draws together a lot of interesting views on Internet technology, from the point of view of a computer company. He does not seem like much of a writer, and a lot of his site seems to be driven or vetted by the IBM PR department, but the access he has to people and events in the industry makes up for a lot of that.

Martha Stewart

Don't laugh! If you're doing anything involving media, or if you're thinking of doing anything involving media, take a look at how Martha does it. Her website integrates with her TV show, they both integrate with her magazine, the whole thing points back to Martha by Mail, etc., etc. It shows what it's possible, in any endeavor, when it's approached with a singular vision, rather than with committee groupthink.

Project Gutenberg

Free literature! Going on now (in one fashion or another) since 1971, Project Gutenberg has been turning out-of-copyright media (books, mainly) into machine-readable texts for the common good. You've probably been there before, but there's reason enough for you to go there again.

TDCJ Final Meals List

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has a web page up listing executionees' last meal requests. Particularly interesting is how many of them request a pack of cigarettes along with their meal. This request is routinely denied -- the state can't have these people getting all unhealthy on them, now. The records go back to 1982.

Big Fun Glossary

From the site's own description: "The purpose of this glossary is to give the reader an idea of state-of-the art youth hedonism as it exists in Central Virginia in the late 1990s." There are a number of relatively separate pieces of content at the site, but for my money the Glossary has not been topped.

Jerry Pournelle

Okay, okay, if you're a knowledgeable computer person, you're probably groaning to see his name listed here. Pournelle wrote the Computing at Chaos Manor column for Byte for many years. He now does the same for Byte in its web-only incarnation, and he maintains a huge, sprawling, terribly-organized personal website (which is what is linked here). I used to think that Jerry was pretty cool, in the 1980s -- he was forever building gadgets to hook together his computers, and he seemed pretty adept. Now, his computer columns are mainly about getting Windows 2000 to use a particular off-brand of DVD-ROM drive. Possibly a metaphor for the entire state of the art. Anyway, he's a competent writer, and even if he has grown annoying and become (even more of) a nut, he's worth reading just because at least his annoying complaining is well-written.

Instapundit

A fairly well-informed weblog covering, primarily, legal and political issues from a libertarian-conservative perspective. Like all weblogs, it has its good days and its, well, less-good days. It's usually a good pointer to valuable under-reported stories, though.